Last week, we created a hit list with all the restaurants in your area. This week, we are going to look at that list and see which restaurants will look at your product.

Step Two – Compare products and pricing.Cost is a big deal to restaurants (and all the rest of us) especially in this day and age. One way to never have to apologize for your price is to wisely choose your market.

So this week, we are going to pull the menus on those targeted restaurants.

Make a list of all of the products that you currently have in plenty. These are the products that you have a nice big weekly supply of. We started with eggs. (The reason that we had lots and lots of eggs with no market is another story for another day)

Put your price next to all of your products – you might already have this and if you don’t, now is a good time to go ahead and develop a restaurant price list for your farm. You’re going to want to have this on hand for later.

Now take that list of your farm products and compare it with the restaurant’s menu.You want to make sure that your pricing for this particular place is inline with theirs. For instance, if one of your plentiful products is filet mignon (don’t we wish?) and you charge $25/lb for it. The restaurant has this cut on the menu for $13, you’re not going to be selling any filet to them. However, if they have a nice burger on the menu for $10 and your ground beef is $5/lb, you might just have a winner!

A good rule of thumb is that food cost could be 20-30% of the plate cost – this includes veggies.

The other big thing to check is what meals they serve. A full service restaurant will have need of many more products than one that serves only dinner.

But don’t pick up that phone yet, there is still more to come before you make that first contact.

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About Sheri Salatin

Sheri is married to Daniel Salatin. She is the marketing director at Polyface Farm and stay-at-home mom of three children. Sheri is passionate about clean food and is enjoying working the land along side her husband. When not farming, Sheri can be found reading, writing, sewing, baking and serving in her church family.